The first thing Gem did was correct his earlier mistake. He went around to each of his mobs and updated their instructions. They would fight intruders and alert him of their presence by growling at him. He had each mob try it, to make sure they understood the assignment, and they all seemed to. Except the Plantlings, who didn’t seem to have an understanding of the word ‘growl’ and so instead just shrieked with all of their might.

Gem thought after the five Plantlings shrieked mentally at him at once.

“Yeah. They don’t exactly know their own volume, huh?”

Gem decided to leave that feature off the Plantlings. They weren’t his regular mobs, and they would likely be in the tunnels. He didn’t really need an early warning system from them.

When that was done, Gem convinced Chesu to teach him how to split his consciousness. The act took a lot of work, and way more time than Gem was comfortable spending on a side task. But he knew being able to work a generator as he built would save him so much time now, and being able to run the generator while he did other things around his dungeon would save him a lot of time in the future.

Controlling two versions of himself was confusing, but thankfully he didn't need to do anything more than work a generator with the one. Thinking Break every few moments and then allowing his inventory to collect the resulting block was easy.

Perhaps later he’d get better at it and could do more, like prune the trees or harvest wood.

Maybe he could even build in double time. That would be a sight to behold.

But, until he gained more precision, the generator was a safe and low-effort situation.

When his duplicate self was set up at the generator and producing a few blocks without issue, Gem and Chesu went back to building the bridge.

Gem turned back to look at his dungeon.

“Good call!” Chesu said with a chipper tone. A proper entrance is always advisable. You can even put a queuing system there, since you’ll be super popular. Let adventurers know another group is delving.”

As Gem built out a 5x5 room to act as an entrance, Chesu explained how a queuing system would work. Adventurers could only run a dungeon as a single party, but adventurers could not be trusted to wait their turn. A queuing system would force them to wait until the previous group died or succeeded, and then it could be set to give Gem time to reset his mobs and change up his trap rooms. Once he was ready, the next party could be let in.

And when he had more than one floor, he could even set it up to show the individual groups.

When he was ready, Chesu explained where to find the default queuing system. It was under the Decorations menu, way at the back, and easy to ignore amid all of the plants and other interesting decor. It was just a simple black line in preview, but when Gem put it in place outside the entrance, he could see there were five little indents to represent the members of the party. At the far end was a single one that was red.

“The smaller ones will light up when people are alive. If someone dies, the indent goes dark again. The bigger one is for you. If it’s red, the door is closed and no one can come in. Blue means you’re open.”

Gem thought.

Chesu shrugged and turned away. “Some Dungeon Core likely thought of it and the system thought it was a good idea. Seems like a useful enough system.” He tapped the cobblestone wall right next to the hole in the wall. “So what’s your plan here?”

Gem sent the wisp a frown.

As soon as the thought was out of his head, Gem realized what he could use his alternate self for and felt the desire to grin.

“Ah, yeah. Well, you don’t want to make it out of cobblestone or mossy stone or whatever. You’ll give away the game on your doors. Instead, just make it out of wood for now, and then you can update when you find obsidian or something.”

Gem followed the wisp’s advice. Because the Ostrum and adventurers alike couldn’t destroy his blocks, he thought the wood was fitting. It wouldn’t be scary or impressive like other materials, but it was good for a Forest Dungeon. When he was done with installing the gate, Gem added vines and flowers to the gate.

“What’d you do that for?”

Gem thought with an indignant sniff.

The wisp shrugged as if that were an adequate response and they continued on.

They backtracked their way down the bridge slowly as Gem built the passage out by a block on either side. It was easier to focus on this task since part of his brain was already preoccupied, and he misplaced way fewer blocks than the original build.

He quickly caught up to himself. With over 300 more blocks in his inventory and a steady amount coming from his generators, Gem felt confident they would make it to the main island before daybreak. Then adventurers would delve into his dungeon and Gem would earn experience. He could be a real dungeon, and maybe, just maybe, actually save the world.